1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communication systems, and deals more particularly with methods, systems, computer program products, and methods of doing business by annotating and routing messages among users of such systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Instant messaging systems are a popular communications mechanism for many people, and provide for instant, real-time communication between users who are connected to the system through an on-line or electronic networking environment such as the Internet, World Wide Web (hereinafter, “Web”), or corporate internal intranets. Examples of instant messaging systems include Yahoo!® Messenger, AOL Instant MessengersSM, and Sametime®. (“Yahoo!” is a registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both, “AOL Instant Messenger” is a service mark of America Online, Inc., and “Sametime” is a registered trademark of Lotus Development Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.)
Instant messaging systems provide real-time awareness of who is logged on. Typically, an instant messaging (hereinafter, “IM”) system user has an address book or “buddy list” containing names or nicknames for those people with whom he communicates. The entries in this address book are used for selecting a message recipient. The IM system (“IMS”) typically indicates, using a visual cue (such as different icons or different fonts), which of the people are logged on to the system and which are not. When the message sender and the target recipient are both currently logged on to an IMS (which may be the same IMS, or a different IMS), the message can be delivered and presented to the recipient nearly instantly (depending on network delay). Instant messaging systems are well known in the art, and a detailed description thereof is not deemed necessary to an understanding of the present invention.
Instant messaging systems are becoming integral business tools, and enable team members or business associates to communicate more efficiently and effectively (e.g., as they collaborate on a project). In the course of an IM session between two or more business associates, it might become clear that a portion of the electronic conversation is relevant to a third party, such as an administrative assistant. In such cases, it would be advantageous for the relevant information to be routed to that third party. Current IM systems do not provide techniques for selectively sending information to other parties.
Similarly, e-mail systems have crude abilities to route information to parties other than the target message recipients (identified using a “to” list), namely using “cc” and “bcc” lists (i.e., carbon copy and blind carbon copy lists). Typically, the entire e-mail message is sent to the parties named on the “cc” and “bcc” lists. Some e-mail messages contain information that is inappropriate for routing beyond the “to” list. The related invention discloses techniques with which an e-mail author or document author can create audience-specific views of documents, such that different views or versions of a message or document can be created and sent to recipients (or created and stored for later sending). As discussed therein, it is not feasible for a content author to have to create multiple versions of content and manually send the correct version to each different set of audience members.
There is an ongoing need for techniques that provide for routing message content efficiently while allowing different recipients to receive different versions of the content.